The list of constituencies in which BJP got fewer votes this time includes Varanasi, where the PM won, Yogi’s home turf Gorakhpur, Rajnath Singh’s constituency Lucknow and Faizabad, which includes Ayodhya.Not surprisingly, Amethi and Rae Bareli too figure in the list.
The only constituencies in which BJP polled more votes than last time in UP were Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida) in the national capital region, Bareilly and Kaushambi. Even among these, its vote share was lower in 2024 than in 2019 in Bareilly and just slightly higher in the other two seats.
BJP had polled just under 4.3 crore votes of the over 8.6 crore votes in UP last time. This time round, while the total votes polled in the state went up a little to just under 8.8 crore, BJP got a little over 3.6 crore votes.
Part of this decline was because it did not contest three of the seats it had contested last time – Bijnor, Baghpat and Ghosi – but even if we look only at the 75 seats it contested in both elections, its votes polled dropped from 4.1 crore to 3.6 crore or about 50 lakh. That’s an average of nearly 67,000 votes dropped on each seat.
Of the 75 seats, BJP’s votes declined by over a lakh in 12, including Mathura, Aligarh, Muzaffarnagar and Fatehpur Sekhri in the west and Gorakhpur in the east. In another 36 seats, the drop was between 50,000 and a lakh. These included Amethi, Rae Bareli, Allahabad, Ghaziabad, Mainpuri and Varanasi, where the PM got over 60,000 votes less this time.
BSP had won 8 of these 75 seats last time. Of those, SP and Congress won six this time and Chandrashekhar won Nagina. The decline in its own votes meant that BJP could not capitalize on the BSP’s decimation and could only wrest Amroha from it.
